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Visiting Scholar Ariel Ekblaw SM '17, PhD '20 speaks with WBUR’s On Point host Meghna Chakrabarti about her academic career, the space industry and her new non-profit company the Aurelia Institute. The company is “dedicated to building humanity’s future in space for the benefit of the earth,” says Chakrabarti. Additionally, the company plans to use “space infrastructure, satellites, and large scale space structures in orbit to do really profound things for day-to-day life on Earth,” adds Ekblaw. 

CNBC reporter Diana Olick spotlights Quaise Energy, an MIT spinoff developing geothermal energy technology. “We intend to build the first in the world superhot, or super critical geothermal power plant, to show exactly that 10X output that you get by going hotter,” says Carlos Araque '01 MS '02. 

Writing for Bloomberg, Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Venice Biennale, describes his vision for the exhibition and explains how this year’s theme of adaptation connects to the future of architecture. “The planet has changed, and institutions must change too, especially those devoted to the built environment,” explains Ratti. “A biennale can become a tool for exploration, for collaboration, for reckoning. This doesn’t mean giving up on spectacle or beauty. But it does mean rethinking what we celebrate.” 

Noman Bashir, a fellow with the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium and a postdoc at CSAIL, speaks with Wired reporter Molly Taft about AI and energy consumption. Bashir explains that how quickly a model answers a question has a big impact on its energy use. “The goal is to provide all of this inference the quickest way possible so that you don’t leave their platform,” Bashir says. “If ChatGPT suddenly starts giving you a response after five minutes, you will go to some other tool that is giving you an immediate response.”

Vijay Gadepally, a senior scientist at MIT Lincoln Lab, discusses users can help conserve energy while using AI tools, reports Nicolás Rivero for The Washington Post. Gadepally notes that users can save energy by asking the AI to be concise when you don’t need long answers, as models use more energy for each word they process. “People often mistake these things as having some sort of sentience,” says Gadepally. “You don’t need to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ It’s okay. They don’t mind.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Angelina Torre spotlights “Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter,” a new book by MIT Libraries Conservator Jana Dambrogio and King’s College London Senior Lecturer Daniel Smith that explores the history and art of “folding a letter so it serves as its own envelope.” The book “calls on scholars to ‘read the folds’ of written correspondence – to peer into the historical, social or personal circumstances that might not be explicitly stated,” explains Torre. 

ArchDaily reporter Reyyan Dogan explores the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale with Prof. Carlo Ratti, this year’s curator. Dogan notes that “by fostering a forward-thinking dialogue on the intersection of architecture and global crises, the Biennale encourages both visitors and practitioners to think critically about the role of architecture in shaping the future.” Ratti explains that this year’s exhibit “is really about how architecture can bring together all different forms of intelligence, and bridge them, and actually help adapt to a changing climate.” 

Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Architecture Venice Biennale, speaks with Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou of Designboom about his vision for this year’s showcase, which centers around reimagining the role of intelligence in shaping the built environment. ‘It’s basically about how we can use different disciplines and different forms of intelligence in order to tackle the most important problem today: adaptation,” Ratti explains. “In short, you could say architecture is survival.”

Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Venice Biennale, speaks with Archinect reporter Niall Patrick Walsh about his vision for the biennale as a “living laboratory from which ideas and research can emerge to guide the evolution of the built environment.” Says Ratti: “We are hoping to use the biennale to convey the message that architecture is about survival. Architecture is central to how we can move from climate mitigation to adaptation. If we can use the biennale as a way to reorient how we work and practice, that will be its most important legacy.”

President Sally Kornbluth and more than 170 other college presidents have co-signed a letter drafted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities “condemning “undue government intrusion” into campus affairs,” writes Hilary Burns for The Boston Globe. “Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation,” the statement reads. “Because of these freedoms, American institutions of higher learning are essential to American prosperity and serve as productive partners with government in promoting the common good.”

Ariel Ekblaw, principal investigator for the “To the Moon to Stay” mission and a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab, speaks with Chaiel Schaffel of WBZ News Radio about the three payloads MIT engineers built for a recent mission to the moon. Of the AstroAnt rover that Ekblaw and her team developed for spacecraft assembly and external servicing, she explains: "What we want to do in the future is send hundreds or thousands that will crawl on the outside of space stations, maybe crawl on the outside of a lunar habitat, and do the inspections that would be really risky for humans to do."

Researchers at MIT have sent three payloads into space, including the AstroAnt, a small robotic device developed to help monitor spaceship conditions, reports Kenneth Chang for The New York Times. The AstroAnt rover is about the size of a “Hot Wheels” toy car and can measure a lunar rover’s temperature and communicate via a wireless Bluetooth connection. “MIT researchers envision that swarms of AstroAnts could be used to perform various tasks in space,” Chang explains. 

Orlando Sentinel reporter Richard Tribou spotlights the AstroAnt, a small robotic device developed by MIT researchers to monitor spaceship conditions during lunar missions. The device can wheel around the roof of a lunar rover “to take temperature readings and monitor its operation.”  

MIT researchers developed a small robotic rover called the AstroAnt and a depth-mapping camera for use in monitoring spaceship conditions during space missions, reports Richard Luscombe for The Guardian. The AstroAnt is designed to “eventually assist in diagnostic and repair tasks for spacecraft during lunar missions,” explains Luscombe.

Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray spotlights how MIT researchers developed a thumb-sized rover and a depth-mapping camera, technologies that will be used on a mission to the south pole of the Moon. The mini rover, dubbed AstroAnt, could one day be used to “patrol the exteriors of lunar probes, satellites, or space stations. Some might use cameras to spot meteorite damage, while others could apply sealants to prevent air or fuel leaks.”